Billboard : 02/16/1957
Score of 80

There is an abundance of Al Cohn tenor on jazz disks, but this is the most satisfying Cohn LP to date. The reason is simply that the sides are not cluttered up with some a&r man’s ideas about arrangements, and the set swings from start to finish. Cohn, while still somewhat influenced by Pres Young, is playing a more robust, downright funky horn here, assisted by one of the best rhythm sections in jazz, plus trombonist Rehak. The style is modern-mainstream, and for a big audience. The cover is noteworthy too. Idaho and Blue Lou are good trial tracks.

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Miami Herald
Fred Sherman : 05/05/1957

The other album is Cohn on the Saxophone by Dawn. Here Al is with trombonist Frank Rehak from the Gillespie band. Big name rhythm section: Hank Jones on piano, Milt Hinton on bass and drumming by Osie Johnson. It shows up, too. Only 10 numbers on this album, and it proves again how much more you get from a group when they are not tied down to those three-minute bits. It’s mostly a showcase for the Cohn tenor. The Rehak horn comes through strongly on only a couple.

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San Francisco Chronicle
Ralph J. Gleason : 02/10/1957

If you’re old enough to remember the original for this pun you’re older than Al Cohn. This is the best LP he has made under his own name, a fine strong fibred emotionally powerful and wailing album. Al is accompanied by a rhythm section and a trombone – all superior musicians.

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Down Beat : 03/04/1957
Ralph J. Gleason : 5 stars

This is the best Al Cohn LP I have ever heard and one of the best jazz LPs in recent months. As a free-blowing session it has everything, and its appeal should be equally strong for those oriented ins wing as well as in modern jazz. Do not miss it.

The rhythm section is a perfect, pulsating, prime mover, with a grace and taste that is utterly delightful. Both Cohn and Rehak get ample opportunity to blow freely and both make the most of it. Whatever that indefinable (in words) quality is that we refer to as “soul” and “wailing” can be precisely demonstrated by Cohn’s performance on this album. Both on his own compositions and on the attractive set of standards and ballads that comprise the different tracks, Cohn gets a remarkable amount of emotional charge into every one of his solos.

Blue Lou and Old Blues in particular (We Three, too, for that matter) have that combination of urgency and relaxation that is undeniable in jazz. You can’t wander from this album when you play it. It demands and holds your attention and it does it by its emotional quality. There’s not a trick, not a gimmick, not an arranging device in it. There is not one bar of mannered or contrived playing. The entire content of the LP is straight ahead, honest, and irrepressibly swinging jazz that won’t quit.

Aside from Cohn’s superlative performance, there are good solos by Rehak, Jones, and Hinton, and even when the drummer takes his breaks, taste is the password. This is uncomplicated blowing jazz at its best, and it should serve as a solid convincer to those who have been reluctant to admit Cohn to the hierarchy of jazz soloists. I expect to be playing this album for a long, long time.

The notes by Gary Kramer are a model of clarity and intelligence.

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Liner Notes by Gary Kramer

Al Cohn is one of the hardest working and most sought-after musicians in Local 802. This isn’t just because he is an extremely competent technician and knowing stylist, but because, in addition, he is an “idea man.” Many veins of modern jazz have been so thoroughly worked over that there gets to be a premium on miners like Cohn that can be relied upon to bring up a handful of bright new nuggets every trip down.

With all the bread-and-butter jobs available to jazzmen today, some cynics are saying (with a grain of reason) “More musicians than ever are eating now, and fewer than ever of them are thinking.” That Cohn can’t be included among the latter is all the more remarkable for the fact that he gets so few breathing spells between jobs. The originality and solidity of his work can easily be documented from his prolific record output. Cohn’s undeniable progress is not so much a matter of “advancing” but one of broadening and deepening.

The most impressive thing about Cohn is his sense of heritage, his awareness of what elements of traditional jazz are worth preserving and synthesizing with the modern idiom. His fundamental beat, his dynamic tone and his extrovert spirit are reincarnations in modern dress of some of the permanently useful ingredients of the older jazz. Observing the frantic efforts of some musicians these days to be “modern” at any cost, Cohn remarked, “Sometimes I feel I don’t belong in the modern school at all. Lots of people try to be modern and lose sight of the path.” Cohn has a conscious pride in being in the “mainstream” and is not ashamed of his debt to Armstrong, Young, Hawkins and the other giants who antedate Charlie Parker.

Cohn, even though he records frequently with modernists of the more “advanced” sort, admits that when he is at home, he prefers usually to play records for his own pleasure that go back 10 years or more. “They had a happier, more relaxed sound. In general, the solos were much more memorable – and I think that that is a necessary mark of great jazz.” Cohn is a product of the Swing Era and its big bands, and without feeling that he is a reactionary, goes back to that music for enjoyment and inspiration. It is not a matter of copying anything done in the early Forties, but of being re-infected by the spirit of a less inhibited musical atmosphere.

Al was born and brought up in Brooklyn. As a youngster, he had eyes only for the piano and the clarinet. Lester Young was the great influence of his teen-age years, he recalls, and was his inspiration to take up the tenor saxophone. He learned to play tenor by himself, and even though he never took a lesson on the instrument, at 18 he landed a job with Joe Marsala‘s big band. Then for several years, until the end of 1946, Cohn played with George Auld off and on. Stints in the Alvino Rey, Buddy Rich, Woody Herman, Artie Shaw and bands followed. In the last few years, he has been as active as a writer and arranger as he has been an instrumentalist.

The recording date here, Cohn recalls was a very relaxed, sociable affair. Messrs. Hinton, Johnson, and Jones of the rhythm section were old colleagues of many a previous session. Recently Cohn has also worked on several occasions with Frank Rehak, the Gillespie band trombonist, and with him, too, there is a comfortable relationship. The material decided upon for this LP consists of standards for the most part, plus three originals by Cohn. Many of the tunes are of the less-familiar variety, and proved to be a fresh kick on revival.

This program is an informal blowing session. It makes you want to dance. All of which is to say that a detailed analysis of the selections in this album, chorus by chorus, would be an academic choice not in keeping with the spirit of the date. A few random highlights might be pointed out. Like the beauty of Cohn’s tone in Softly, the simplicity and sincerity of his conception; the of When Day is Done; the way Cohn livens up Blue Lou, darting in and out like a flash. Or take Cohn’s slow-tempo Blues original for insight into his New Orleans-oriented side; or Idaho to see why the rhythm section rates as New York’s finest; or listen to We Three if you want to know where the expression wail came from. Be Loose with its repeated figure exchanged by Rehak and Cohn in perpetual motion is a delight.

Here is modern jazz that continually arouses subtle associations with jazz’s storied past without injecting an archaic note. The distinctive craftsmanship of all five musicians showcased here guarantees listening pleasure for connoisseur and layman alike. Swing on this. It will get good to you.